Webstorm Context Folder always included on url path?

Question

Based on my understanding WebStorm has the concept of context Root ( basically the root of your project for source purposes) and Resource Roots folder(s) from which web requests can be resolved relative to.

I've got a project structure like

Projects (Context Root)
      |
      MyProject  (ResourceRoot)
         |--- html
         |----css
         |----images

I'd like to access my html files like so http://localhost:34343/html/index.html

however that's not possible. The only way I can access files is when the 'Projects' context root forms part of my url. e.g http://localhost:34343/Projects/html/index.html

(note that the resourceroot seems to be working to some extent as a I can omit the 'MyProject' part of the path.

I've got some css with absolute references that want to access /images which break when the context root has to be included. As far as I can tell moving the Context root 'down' a level isn't going to help as it will require 'MyProject' on the path.

I'm guessing I can probably force it to use something like apache where I can get more control of url resolution, but Ideally I'd use the built in server from the IDE.

Answer 1

http://localhost:63342/html/index.html -- you cannot have this kind of URL with built-in web server .. as IDE does not know what project to serve (as it works for ALL your projects a not only currently opened).

When built-in web server is in use, the URL has to have some hint (PROJECT_NAME) that would tell what project to serve (where to take files from).

Built-in web server supports 2 kind of URLs (both of them will serve the same file):

http://localhost:63342/PROJECT_NAME/index.html
http://PROJECT_NAME:63342/index.html

If you happy with 2nd URL, then you will have to do these steps:

1. Create Deployment entry (Settings/Preferences | Build, Execution, Deployment | Deployment) and mark it as Default for this project. The URL defined there (http://PROJECT_NAME:63342/) will be used when opening pages from within IDE.

   This is required if you want to use Open in Browser functionality, otherwise you may safely skip it.

2. In your hosts file (or your local DNS server, if you have one) define an entry that would point PROJECT_NAME to your IP. For example (for hosts file): 127.0.0.1 PROJECT_NAME.